


Stability

by misbehavingvigilante



Series: Sync [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Background Relationships, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-05
Updated: 2018-03-05
Packaged: 2019-03-27 07:48:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13876419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misbehavingvigilante/pseuds/misbehavingvigilante
Summary: Widowmaker watches Reaper’s shifting form through her scope. He’s more smoke than man like this, never quite forming the full human silhouette as smoke wafts off him in thick waves, hazing the distance nearest him with a cloud of life draining miasma.





	Stability

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chiwibel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiwibel/gifts).



> For Isabel~ Happy Birthday, I have gifted you more team talon with a side order of r76. 
> 
> I wrote most of this during a flare so I hope it's coherent enough to understand the theme I was going for which was essentially team talon is a family and familial relationships are just as important as romantic ones. Also I hope as a whole the piece flows okay, but I tried. 
> 
> Anyways, I did like how this piece turned out even if there's my whole abrupt ending thing going on again... apologies about that, but enjoy?

Widowmaker watches Reaper’s shifting form through her scope. He’s more smoke than man like this, never quite forming the full human silhouette as smoke wafts off him in thick waves, hazing the distance nearest him with a cloud of life draining miasma. The lucky few who are out of his range are delivered to death with shot gun blasts from transient limbs before the smoke fans out over the battlefield in hunt for its next target.

At this point, Widowmaker is more a witness than an ally but she knows it is better to let Reaper get this out of his system when he’s like this. Sometimes it’s a case of his emotions unravelling his human form, other times it’s an aftereffect of what disarray his genetics ended up leaving him in an unstable form.

Although as it drags on, she feels compelled into action, so she bides her time by calling Sombra on a secure line.

“Oh hey, spider.” Sombra’s bored voice greets her. “You guys having trouble? Please tell me you’re having trouble so I can do something more entertaining than threading through all this Talon grunt work.”

Talon knows a good way to punish Sombra is to use her gifts against her, making her sort through all sorts of data with a fine toothed comb where her eyes could see what others might not given her technological expertise. Though most of the time, these tasks produce nothing, rather it’s just the tedious, monotone nature that Talon uses to keep her in line, knowing she enjoys more entertaining things.

“I am not a lackey. I swear, they’re trying to kill me from boredom.”

Incorrect. Talon would not kill someone by boredom, it lacked the cruelty or ruthlessness they were known for. There was a reason why Talon deeply frightened people, why they were the boogeyman of the world when people fell either through prominent assassins robbing hope from a generation or a lover’s touch turned deadly.

Gérard… he had never seen it coming, sometimes that was crueler than if he had been awake for the last moments of betrayal at Talon’s making.

“Reach out to 76.” Widowmaker cuts through her own thoughts when she hears Reaper roar on the battlefield below her, it cements her in the present instead of getting lost in her head again.

“You know that old man doesn’t always pick up.” Sombra says, her tone trying for her usual amusement but concern floods in.

They don’t reach out to 76 unless they need to. Gabriel’s old flame never quite blown out as others had believed had rekindled their relationship recently. Sombra had complained openly about it, saying how the pda was gross when she had to scrub footage or turn off security systems for their clandestine meetings.

Widowmaker could agree the two got handsy without really caring if they had an audience or not but she would not openly discuss such things. Behind Gabriel’s back, with Sombra however was another story.

However they never could really complain when Jack brought stability back to Gabriel that hadn’t been present in years.

Stability Gabriel could very much use right now, expanding more and more into a sentient black hole feasting on the remnants of life in front of him. Sometimes when Gabriel got like this, he lost his sense of identity and could only really read the signs of life and being drawn to them.

More often than not to devour that life, but he could still recognize forms like that somehow still retaining sentient despite the otherworldly form.

“Then hack his visor. Are you not the world’s best hacker?” Amélie felt a breathless quality in her voice rising with an undercurrent of anxiety running through her at seeing Gabriel like this. Somedays she’s glad her form is stable if nothing else, and Moira had never inflicted the same genetic chaos on her as she had on Gabriel.

How must it feel to come apart at the seams and force yourself together time and time again? To be on death’s door and always robbed constantly from an end to the suffering.

“Use my coordinates. I will corral Gabriel here if I must.”

“On it.” Sombra sounds solemn which is never a good sign. Widowmaker swings down from her perch using her grappling hook, landing effortlessly as she approaches Gabriel who doesn’t give her a sign if he’s noticed her or not.

“Gabriel.” She uses his name and one of her softest tones, one that Amélie might have in the past before blood and death had become her domain.

It’s hard to read body language of a formless smoke being but if she’s not mistaken by the veer towards her, she has his attention at least.

“Focus on my life force.” Gabriel had once told her, her life force had been rather memorable, a faint thing, small like an unassuming spider but vivacious when she should have been in death’s hands. Her slow heart and freezing body temperature akin more to the dying than the living.

She wasn’t an exceptionally bright spot, not loud in the way Sombra’s own life force had been like an explosion of light from a hacked computer screen mocking you for your half ass security measures.

Amélie hopes she is enough in the meantime.

Gabriel stills, and the smoke stop its spiral outwards like a galaxy, Sombra’s voice cards through the silence. “76 says he’s on his way. How is Gabe?”

“Listening.”

“Tell him I can’t snark with his smoke monster self so he better cut that shit out.”

Amélie reads through the lines. “Sombra’s worried about you, too. She’s gotten that high pitch tone in her voice that you always tease her about that you say reflects how much of a brat she usually acts like.” 

“Hey!” Sombra’s offended gasp fills her ears but she pays little mind to it at the vaguely humanoid shape forming in front of her instead.

“You were the first person to believe that Amélie still lived in Widowmaker.” Amélie remembers the hopeful stares, at even the barest return of emotion that was meant to be suppressed or a muscle memory pulled from her life before.  She remembers his hovering presence, protective in a way he shouldn’t have been as she had harmed one of his dearest friends, yet never vengeful, never towards her.

Lastly, Amélie recalls the faith, when the moments she had of doubt surface that the shards of Amélie she retained would only shatter under the weight of reconditioning, Gabriel had been there assuring her, he wouldn’t allow her to return the weapon they made her.

“Return that faith to me. Let me see that Gabriel still remains in Reaper.”

It takes him a few tries, first attempts are either limbs and organs out of place, like something out of a horror film relying on a visceral reaction or a human facsimile appearing only to burst from smoke seconds later. But eventually Gabriel solidly appears in front of her within minutes, looking exhausted without his bone white mask to hide his features behind yet undoubtedly himself all the same.

“Welcome back.” She greets kindly, going by the grimace on Gabriel’s face Sombra had left him a few choice words of her own but on his private channel of his comm.

Sombra could be surprisingly shy at times.

“Thanks.”

“You’d do the same for me.” Amélie shrugs, the sentimentality of this moment is far too close to who and how she was before that it’s striking to look down and see her skin blue.

But by the appearance of one gruff vigilante in the foreground, she knows her time with Gabriel is short.

He raises an eyebrow. “You called Jack?

“Hello? Sombra here? Anyone remember her?” Sombra’s annoyed voice rings through both of their comms at once. “I swear, you two don’t appreciate me enough, always getting Talon free channels on demand. I should charge you.”

“Your payment is me covering your ass when you go off mission.” Gabriel replied without missing a beat, as if he hadn’t been an embodiment of smoke just moments ago.

Widowmaker bites back a chuckle. She loves it when these two bicker, it’s like music to her ears. “I will come rescue you from the perils of grunt work, Sombra.” She could use the company after all, Sombra’s noisy presence was good balm against dark thoughts as she didn’t have a lover to occupy her as Gabriel did.  

“This is why she’s my favorite spider, and you’re not my favorite smoke monster.” One could literally hear her sticking her tongue out, making her out to be the exact brat Gabriel accused her of.  

“What other smoke monster do you even know?” Gabriel rolled his eyes. Her silence was answer enough for him. He set his eyes on Jack, the appearance of his husband alone was comfort enough. But he would be greedy, and drink in all of the time Jack had to offer without Talon getting suspicious trusting Amélie would likely offer up a plausible excuse to explain away his prolonged absence. “I’ll be back later. Can’t let the pretty boy’s time go to waste after he busted his flat ass over here for me.”

“Gross.” Sombra’s disgust travelled well over the comm as if it personally offended her to see any part of Gabriel’s love life. “Spider, save yourself before the shameless old men start making out again. Ugh, what should we tell Talon?”

“I’ll report to Talon that Reaper was in pursuit of Solider: 76.”


End file.
